RE:American taxation Do you have any idea how much tax is applied to alcohol and tobacco. These sectors have minted millionaires over the years and they are highly taxed.
You can brew your own beer, grow your own pot, but consumers would rather pay for quality / branded product and pay any necessary tax to have it.
Regarding state taxes, this too is a leading motivation behind legalizing Cannabis in the US. You can go and research what Colorado did and the tax benefits it brought to that state. Last I looked it was somewhere in the Billions. Those dollars collected in taxes are additional taxes that do not need to come out of your paycheck in order to fund Government programs.
Legalized Cannabis will PRODUCE jobs, both highly skilled jobs as well as jobs which require lower skill sets. This puts people back to work. Sure, not all Cannabis companies will survive the process of starting up their operations however those who do not will a least put people to work for awhile and those folks can then take those skills over to work at other / larger Cannabis companies that DO survive their initial start-up growing pains.